The Daily SPUF – Page 394 – Brand new video game articles, every day!

A Survey of the Pocket Pets

March 20, 2014 anchor chum 0 Comments comparison, cosmetics, loadout

In the last few years, there have been an awful lot of cosmetic items added to TF2 that are generally referred to as “pocket pets.” These cosmetics have proved extremely popular, and therefore more are added each year. As of the writing of this article (March 2014 by most calendars), there are a total of 16 cosmetics that I would classify as a Pocket Pet. I didn’t include items that hover above your shoulder such as the Robro 3000, Balloonicorn, etc, since they aren’t really a “pocket” pet if they aren’t physically attached to your body. Similarly, I didn’t include… [Continue Reading]

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Why the Heavy Failed

March 19, 2014 Xcam901 0 Comments analysis, balance, heavy, theory

The Heavy arguably represents the most argued aspect of TF2, perhaps only next to the mutilated pile of animal bones that may have once been the random critical horse. From Xxx360tommy420 to ESEA invite players, Heavy has been called overpowered, boring, painful to fight against, painful to play, and many more terms that may not pass the pink hearts filter. So why is heavy so, for the lack of better terms, broken? At the stock level, Heavy appears to be a kind of anti-scout. Sustained rather than burst damage, cripplingly slow speed rather than mobility, track rather than twitch, the… [Continue Reading]

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Phishing in Sawmill

March 18, 2014 Medic 4 Comments advice, economy, trading

So, lately, it seems that Team Fortress 2’s trading system has been full of ups and downs. But while no one can predict when the item servers are going to die or when the trading system will go down for the umpteenth time, there IS something you can protect yourself from. Today, we’ll discuss the recent phishing spree. What’s phishing then? Well, according to Wikipedia, it is: Phishing is the act of attempting to acquire information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details (and sometimes, indirectly, money) by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication. In Team Fortress 2, it’s… [Continue Reading]

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Mod Showcase: Death Run

March 18, 2014 brickinator 0 Comments death, DR, gauntlet, mod, oooooh, run, scary, showcase, sprint

Welcome to another thrilling instalment of Mod Showcase. Brickinator here and I’m gonna chat about Death Run. Contrary to its name Death Run is not an 80’s action movie and is instead a frantic gamemode in which one team must navigate through an obstacle course of deadly traps. The traps usually kill instantly and you don’t respawn for the rest of the match; it’s basically a Japanese gameshow but without the remorse. All but one player are put on the RED team, known as the ‘runners’. The BLU team consists of that one guy left over- usually whoever won last round. He’s… [Continue Reading]

Community Announcements

10v10 “Mirrored Maps” Tournament

March 18, 2014 aabicus 0 Comments announcement, demoknight, event, Highlander

===============IMPORTANT INFO========== Where: The SPUF Server When: Saturday March 22 at 6pm GMT Rotation: pl_retawdab, cp_tiplevarg, cp_lwobtsud ======================================= It’s been a while since we had a SPUF server event, so for this one, we’re keeping it simple. 10v10 Highlander on these mind-bending takes of your favorite maps! Best out of three wins, but even if one team wins the first two we’re doing the third, because half the fun is trying these maps out! Rules: -damage spread and random crits disabled -It’s highlander+bootieknight 10th player. Bootieknight player must equip a shield and booties (Why are we having him? So two… [Continue Reading]

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Extending Southern Hospitality for Crate Justice

March 17, 2014 Tarrynot 0 Comments engineer, weapon

It’s a curious fact that the Strange Southern Hospitality, alone of all the Engineer’s wrenches, ranks up on its owner’s melee kill count rather than sentry kill count. The March 5, 2014 update added sentry kill tracking to it, ruling the former melee-only counter a mistake, but if fans of Southern Hospitality think they’re going to be spattering their spiky wrenches with gore anytime soon, they’ve got another think coming — the newly added sentry kill counter is secondary and doesn’t affect Strange rank. Players all over have been protesting this, of course. They cite the difficulty not only of… [Continue Reading]

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A Particularly Spuffy White Day

March 16, 2014 Jaydor 0 Comments SPUF, story

Just for a bit of background information, this fic comes from the now deleted SPUF Makes A Story thread. Essentially, said thread had members suggesting concepts for one of our writers, Argeon, to write a story about. A number of actual SPUFers were also to be included as characters, which included A 1970 Corvette, aabicus, The Medic, Argeon himself, Huff, and stamda. The final concept ended up being about the SPUFers surviving in the zombie apocalypse, becoming SPUF of the Dead, which can currently be found here on the Daily SPUF. In any case, one of the original concepts suggested was a… [Continue Reading]

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Analysis of the Persian Persuader’s Health Regen

March 15, 2014 aabicus 1 Comment analysis, demoman, Filler, loadout, melee, weapon

If I’m not using the Ullapool Caber or Pain Train, I’m using the Persian Persuader. Health regen is a great thing to have on the Demoman, and the Sticky Jumper synergies surprisingly well with the Persian because it doubles the health return you get from ammo. (I’ve mentioned this before). But I never really understood why. Finally, I got around to doing some testing to figure it out, and I learned that the Persian derives its health return from the amount of primary and secondary ammo on the wearer. (For these purposes, the Booties are considered a stock grenade launcher… [Continue Reading]

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In Between – Hybrid Weapons?

March 14, 2014 Medic 0 Comments analysis, theory, weapon

The other day, I was browsing the Team Fortress wiki when I stumbled across the Short Stop. To me, the Short Stop has always been one of those ‘in between’ weapons. It’s a scatter gun and it’s a pistol. It’s a good idea and I used to use it quite a lot in the Milkman set, but the poor hybrid gun is rather sickly, due to all the changes it has endured. Then it occurred to me, what if we had in between weapons for other classes?

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Tweaking the Vaccinator

March 13, 2014 BiteTheBullet 0 Comments medic, weapon

In my previous article I went through the basics of the Vaccinator, about how and when to use it. Since then, I’ve been using it more – in the niche area I’ve talked about: with a buddy on Steamchat and on a King of the Hill map – and I remain convinced that this medigun is severely underused. Nonetheless, I found a few things that need to be adressed to fully flesh out the medigun that emphazises team communication the most in Team Fortress. Because right now, the Vaccinator is suffering from some quirks that make it less effective than it… [Continue Reading]